Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Readers of this blog who are unfamiliar with the goings on in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, may think reading the comments that there are many who think Singapore is a democracy based on the rule of law. The reader is warned that they may be Singapore government employees whose job is to discredit those who criticize Lee Kuan Yew's authoritarian rule. Please use your discretion as to how much weight you will give these comments.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Here is a urgent short post, for the attention of Burmese in Singapore facing on going and imminent deportation to Burma because they took part in Burmese pro democracy protests in Singapore. Burmese are presently being deported from Singapore with their work passes not being renewed They face life in prison and torture when returned. The Lee Kuan Yew government, a close ally of the junta is collaborating with them in this shameful exercise. Please see the article More Burmese facing expulsion from Singapore of December 30th in the Singapore Democratic Party website.

If you can somehow enter the United States, you will be given asylum. Asylum is granted to those who are being persecuted by a government for among other things, their political beliefs. Persecution can be in the form of, among other things, infliction of punishment by one form or another. It can also be a case where the victim is facing imminent harm, life imprisonment, as in this case.

It does not matter how you get to the US. Even if you enter through fraudulent documents, or other means of illegal entry, you are still eligible for a grant of asylum. The illegal entry is excused. All that you have to accomplish is to board an aircraft bound for the US. Once you arrive at a US port of entry, articulate your fear of persecution, to an Immigration Officer, if you were to be returned. This will entitle you to a hearing before an Asylum officer.

For instance, if you manage to get hold of a Singapore passport, which does not require a visa to enter the US, this may help you board an aircraft. Of course there is the danger of your being apprehended at Singapore airport. The better alternative is to board a flight with a Singapore passport, from an airport outside Singapore. All this of course involves great risk, but this is a choice you would have to make, in these unthinkable circumstances.

Then there are of course, those who may be able to arrange a passage to Mexico, perhaps with a visa from some other country, say Manila, Philippines, or to a Central American country such as Nicaragua. From there, your agent might be able to arrange a passage to the border to help you cross. I am sure there are Burmese in the diaspora who know these things better than I do, to help you to save your lives. My knowledge of these things comes from my having represented asylum clients from many countries.

One possible way is for you to get work on board a cruise ship that stops at a port in the US, say Miami, eg Carnival Cruises on the Caribbean run. This will enable you to get a C1/D crew visa. This will allow you to land in the US, and once this is accomplished, you can apply for asylum. Please note that with this visa category, your only means of remaining in the US is through asylum. You cannot for instance marry an American to get a Green Card or do it by other means. I understand there are agents of these shipping companies in Burma and elsewhere who hire Burmese ship's crew.

Personally I do not know any alien smuggling operations and even if I knew, it would be unethical for me to be directly involved in it. From an ethical standpoint I am however able to tell you what I know.

The United States, unlike Singapore, honors its obligations under the treaties and conventions of the United Nations to protect refugees. They take this obligation seriously.

If you do land in American soil and need my help, don't hesitate to contact me. I will help you. Take care of yourselves and good luck.

Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.

Monday, December 29, 2008

Readers of this blog who are unfamiliar with the goings on in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, may think reading the comments that there are many who think Singapore is a democracy based on the rule of law. The reader is warned that they may be Singapore government employees whose job is to discredit those who criticize Lee Kuan Yew's authoritarian rule. Please use your discretion as to how much weight you will give these comments.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Nay Phone Latt a 28 year old young Burmese man, was sentenced recently to 20 years in jail in Burma, for writing a blog criticizing the Burmese Military junta. This is an unjust outrageous punishment, the severest of all, for a blogger. I was speaking to my Burmese client who tells me that in fact, being aware of the dangers in criticizing this cruel military junta, he did not directly criticize the junta in his blog. What he did was this. If you read the first word of each line of his blog post on the left vertically from top to bottom, it would be something like this" Than Swe is crazy for power". His blog is in the Burmese vernacular. The blog itself was not critical of the Burmese junta at all. The title of it went something like " The city I have dropped" referring to the change of the capital of Burma from Rangoon to Naypwidaw recently.

You can read about this on Reporters Without Borders http://www.rsf.org/article.php3?id_article=29243. This is a moment that everyone, not just in Singapore but around the world should speak out against the injustice against this young man.

Everyone should post his story in their blogs and cry out to high Heaven against this damned injustice. Write to all Burmese Embassies and their government expressing your disgust demanding that the sentence be reversed.

Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Readers of this blog who are unfamiliar with the goings on in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, may think reading the comments that there are many who think Singapore is a democracy based on the rule of law. The reader is warned that they may be Singapore government employees whose job is to discredit those who criticize Lee Kuan Yew's authoritarian rule. Please use your discretion as to how much weight you will give these comments.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Having been sentenced to serve 8 weeks in a Singapore's Queenstown Prison from Sept 20, 2008 to Nov 20, 2008 for having the temerity to criticize a judge in this blog about her conduct of a case where Singapore's strongman Lee Kuan Yew was engaged in his usual pastime of suing his critics for defamation of character in his courts, I had occasion against my will to see the prison doctor almost everyday during my last 2 weeks or so before my release.

Not that there was anything wrong with me but how can you argue with a prison warden when you are a prisoner. Almost everyday, a warden used to open my cell ordering me to go with him down the flight of stairs to see the doctor. He wore a name tag on his shirt, “Dr. Lim Jeng Min, Medical Officer, Singapore Prison Service". He is a small man, small in stature and height, Chinese by race with black hair sticking up and a black birth mark just under his nose running to his lip which gave the aspect of Adolph Hitler. Not athletic as if he never played any sport in his life or as if, with his tender hands, he had spent his entire life in an office.

The rule was for prisoners to be handcuffed while they appear before a doctor. The warden stands next to you watching.

The purpose of my visits to him was to have me weighed and recorded and to check my blood pressure. Each time I was weighed it was with the handcuffs on. Quite often, he forgets to deduct the weight of the handcuffs which I came to know was 500 grams. So after a while he decided to take the weight as it is with the weight of the handcuffs. I was progressively losing weight due to the unpalatable food, and the doctor's purpose was to see how much weight I am losing and not what my weigh actually was.

As to the blood pressure, he claimed my blood pressure was high and once ordered that I have some contraptions strapped to my chest to have my heart beat taken. There is a medical term for it but I had forgotten.

The almost daily routine would be to have me sit next to him and a strap wound on my arm to check my blood pressure. Taking it once wasn’t enough for him. He would repeat it again and again, several times in a row and tell me that my blood pressure was high.

After that he asked if I wanted any medicine. I would say no. I told him not once but repeatedly that I don't need any treatment and I wanted to be left alone. I was fine. It was my body, not his. I was being kept there against my will. I don't need any treatment. Please leave me alone, I told him. But being a prisoner, there is nothing you could do. I was forced to se him again and again, day after day to take that confounded blood pressure and my weight.

Not satisfied with having me brought to him day after day for the same routine against my will, he then said I have to be taken to Changi Hospital to be examined by a doctor there for a second opinion. I am not a doctor but I don’t think taking a man's blood pressure is rocket science. Surely it is not so hard to find out a man's blood pressure. There was no need to have me be transported in prison transport to Changi Hospital for this.

But not with this man, Dr. Lim Jeng Min. He was determined to give the run around. He was determined it seemed to make it difficult, when there was nothing wrong with me. If I knew that, surely that should be sufficient.

So I was to be taken to Changi Hospital. I said I did not want to go. When I refused the Officer Commanding of cell Block A, G Savier, an Indian, came to see me. He said I had to go whether I liked it or not. He said if I did not go, I will be punished, which I assumed to be solitary confinement and that my term in prison will be extended, and other threats were bandied about. Having no choice, I said I will go. But listen to this. I was to change into a prison jump suit; you know the type you see in prison movies, orange pajama type trousers and long sleeves for the trip. If that is not enough, I was to be shackled, which means handcuffs behind you, and a chain running down to your back to your feet connected to handcuffs at your ankles, escorted by an armed prison warder, gripping your arm! This was a bit too much. I said I will go, but without the shackles and chains. Again, no amount of persuasion would move them. The threats from G Savier were the same. If I did not submit to their demands, it will be punishment. So what choice did I have? I changed into the orange monkey prison jump suit and was shackled and chained. At that time, anyone looking at me, could have reasonabley assumed that I had indeed slit the throats of 20 people in cold blood.

Restrained by shackles, one cannot walk in normal strides. You have to walk in short strides or skip to walk, assisted by the armed guard. I get helped into the prison transport, a van with no windows on the far side with seating space only for one, separated by a locked partition where the armed prison escort sits outside. Since there are no windows, obviously you cannot look out. It is completely dark, no lights.

Your indignity is worsened when you reach the hospital. You are paraded walking in short steps, shackled and chained through the hospital concourse and waiting areas where there are many people, patients visitor's, their families and children, who all look at you as if you were Jack the Ripper. Who would blame them? After all you in a prison suite with shackles and chains about you and being escorted with an armed prison officer gripping your arm, as if you will still manage to escape even though thoroughly chained and shackled.

After going through that indignity, I am brought before the Changi Hospital doctor. He takes my blood pressure with the strap around my arm. He tells me there is nothing wrong with me. My blood pressure is fine. After various other medical questions, the examination is over. I have to once again be paraded in my prisoner’s attire through the throngs of people in the hospital to the van.

After returning to the prison, Dr. Lim Jeng Min, goes through the report of the Changi doctor. But Dr. Lim refuses to be satisfied. He then has his kicks with me, by making every person there to take my blood pressure, again and again. He asks the hospital technician there to take it. The man is a Filipino. After that he asks a Chinese woman clerk to take my blood pressure. He then asked another hospital technician who works there Mr. Jeganathan to take it. Mr. Jeganathan rightfully refuses. Dr. Lim Jeng Min's purpose was no other than to humiliate me. To show me that he can do anything he wants whenever he wants. What he tells me is something different. He wanted to be sure, he says, that his diagnosis that I had high blood pressure is accurate. So he says it is necessary to have every person at his prison clinic to have a go at taking my blood pressure. In fact he even asked a warden standing by to try his hand at taking my blood pressure, but the man rightly refused. Dr. Lim is a man, who obviously thinks he can do anything he wants to a prisoner because he is helpless.

True to a certain extent, but not if that released prisoner has Internet service and likes to write blogs!

Coming back to that doctor, believe it or not, he was not satisfied that the Changi Hospital doctor had stated categorically that I had no high blood pressure. He says that I have to see him again. The prison jump suit, shackles, chains and all. It was no point protesting anymore. This doctor was determined to make life difficult for me. And there was nothing I could do. The idea this time was a directive to the doctor at Changi Hospital to fix a device to my body with a line going to my arm, for my blood pressure to be monitored for 24 hours with the contraption on my body. I told the doctor that I wanted no such thing. But no use. I had to go. I had to be paraded one more time as a prisoner to tell everyone in Changi Hospital present that day, that Gopalan Nair, is coming to Changi Hospital.

Well I go to Changi Hospital suffering the same indignity as I go along. I see a nurse technician. I tell her very clearly that there is nothing wrong with me, I don't need any contraptions attached to my body and that the prison doctor is deliberately making life difficult for me. Hearing that she correctly says it is wrong to compel a patient to go through a procedure he does not want and lets me leave. I am brought back to prison again deliberately through areas where the most people were, to be shown like a prize bull, carted off in the prison van to the prison.

When Dr. Lim was told what happened by my prison escort, he clearly wasn't happy. At least I managed to win one round against this doctor.

Just before being released, I asked the doctor about his Hippocratic Oath. In this oath, doctors are supposed to do good for people, not hurt them, or be accomplices to torturing them. In this prison just as in other Singapore prisons, certain prisoners are sentenced to be caned. Let me explain. The caner, if I could call the person that, beats the prisoner in his bare naked buttocks, with a rattan cane, while the prisoner is tied to a wooden brace. Depending on how many strokes the prisoner receives, each stroke of the cane is intended to cause the maximum pain as possible. Almost every stroke of the cane bruises and lacerates the skin, by the force with which the prisoner is beaten, and very often the man faints. I understand this prison doctor Dr. Lim witnesses the beatings and after that treats the prisoner afterwards.

My question to this doctor was whether this is what a doctor should be doing? Personally observing the torture of a human being, without complaint? Wait a minute; has he not taken the Hippocratic Oath? And does it not say that he should do no harm? And not to witness torture without complaint?

And mind you what is worse is this. Most of this cruelty administered is to people who do not deserve being in prison at all, let alone being tortured. You see, under Singapore law, believe it or not, an illegal immigrant or even a person who overstays his visit in Singapore has to be caned under the law. In fact almost half of the prison population in Singapore’s Queenstown Prison are overstayed foreign visitors and all of them will be tortured in this way.

The doctor's answer, expected of an uneducated simpleton, but not expected of an educated man, as this doctor was, was this. He said I am only following the court order. He then said that he satisfied Hippocratic Oath because, although he willingly watches the brutality, he gives them good medical treatment after they have been brutalized!

Wait a moment! Did he take the Hippocratic Oath ? He is another of Lee Kuan Yew's digits. He keeps a low profile, tries not to have too many opinions, he treats his patients and like the vast majority of Singaporeans, keeps his mouth shut. Safety in Singapore lies in being quiet. No need to ruffle the waters, as they say.

I came to understand later that this man read medicine in an Irish University, but not sure whether it was Dublin or Belfast? I am sure Ireland produces good doctors and I do not know what they would think about Dr. Lim Jeng Min they produced.

Was the purpose of the doctor and the prison to put me through this, a deliberate attempt to break my spirit and make me give up in hopelessness? I believe I was being watched everyday and copious notes were being taken by every warden to be given to the authorities to see how I was coping. But to their disappointment, I wasn’t going to give in. Each time I saw a warder, I told him I could not have been better. Even if I had to go through moments of sadness, I never showed it to the wardens. I think this has made Lee Kuan Yew unhappy. I understand he is always unhappy if his victim is not vanquished.

Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Readers of this blog who are unfamiliar with the goings on in Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore, may think reading the comments that there are many who think Singapore is a democracy based on the rule of law. The reader is warned that they may be Singapore government employees whose job is to discredit those who criticize Lee Kuan Yew's authoritarian rule. Please use your discretion as to how much weight you will give these comments.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

On the 17th of September, 2008, after a trial of 8 days, Judge Kan Ting Chiu of the High Court Singapore found me guilty of insulting Judge Belinda Ang. I did no such thing, but in Singapore they can make anything happen. The corrupt judges are there to do anything Lee Kuan Yew wants. And in this case, it will please Lee to have me arrested and jailed for criticizing a Singapore judge. It is as you know, Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore. What I did was to write a blog post on the Internet criticizing Judge Ang for being biased in favor of Lee Kuan Yew and his son in their defamation case against Dr. Chee and the SDP. It was nothing more than an exercise of freedom of speech guaranteed to me by United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The trial before Judge Kan was nothing but a show trial. The judge of course went through the motions of legalese and procedures. But in the end, as expected I was found guilty. He was not acting as a judge in a case. He was sending a signal on behalf of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew that it is dangerous to criticize Lee's government or his judges. I have a blog post just on my case here. Please read it.

My sentence was 3 months jail. I had asked for time to arrange my matters before I surrendered my person to jail.

A day before surrendering myself to jail, I went to see Dr. Chee Soon Juan at his office at Jalan Gallegos off JalanLeban along Upper Thomson Road in the afternoon. We both came down to talk at a coffee shop below. He gave me good advice. He told me not to lose my spirit in jail. "Always keep your chin up" he says. "Lee Kuan Yew wants to break your spirit. Don’t let him", he says. “The thing that Lee hates most is when his victim refuses to give in”. “Never let him win”, he says. “If you stand tall despite the punishment, you win and he loses”. “Keep your spirits about you”, he says. And he finished with reminding me that “it is an honor to go to jail for your beliefs”. Not many in Singapore can claim to do that.

My request for time was granted. I reported to the High Court registry 3 days later on the 20th of September 2008 at 12 noon. I had brought along some books to read, as I knew that prison meant nothing to do at all every day. At the High Court registry I was ordered to hand over my books to the police there who promised to hand them to the prison and later I could receive them.

I was handcuffed and taken down from the 5th floor of the High court to street level in an elevator. 2 policemen were escorting me. At street level, I rode the prison van from the High Court to Queenstown Prison. I still had my watch with me. The time was about 2 pm. After a ride of about 30 minutes, I arrived at Queenstown Remand Prison.

I was taken to a room and asked to take off all my clothes and change into prison clothes which were a blue pair of shorts and a white T shirt. A prison warden was watching me do it. I was asked to put my own clothes and shoes into a container which was taken away.

I was then told to sit at a counter facing an officer in the next room. Here there was a row of about 4 counters where prison officers will carry out the procedures for prisoners recording their personal items for safekeeping. The officer was seen taking out all the items I had and recording them one by one; one watch, one wallet, one comb, etc. After recording, he takes a picture with mounted cameras of the items taken and they were recorded.

I was given a plastic bracelet which I was asked to wear. This bracelet had my prisoner number 101232008. Thereafter I was prisoner 101232008.

Once that was over, I was given a box with an open cover and a thin floor mat. In the box were one towel, a piece of soap in a container, a small toothpaste which had no fluoride and no brand which was made in China, a plastic cup and a soft plastic toothbrush which could be bent any way and a plastic container for holding water.

The warden ordered me to carry the floor mat and the box 4 flights of stairs to the 4th floor. My cell was to be cell 422 on the 4th floor A block. I entered the cell. There were 2 other men in that cell, Mr. Pham, a Vietnamese national who was given 50 days in jail for being a cashier for a roadside gambling operation in Lorong 14, Geylang and Mr. Chu, also Vietnamese, who was given 20 days for selling duty unpaid cigarettes at Lorong 23 Geylang. Pham was 26 years old and Chu was 36. Pham could speak a little English but Chu nothing at all.

The cell is about 10 feet wide and about 25 feet long. The ceiling was very high. There are no windows. From an opening covered by a mesh of about 1 foot in breath at the ceiling on the opposite end of the door, you could tell whether it was day or night because of the light from outside. There was also a similar opening above the door.

On the 4th floor just as in the other floors, there are a long row of cells like mine on both sides of a walkway.

The door of my cell occupies half the front of the cell. On the other half of it is an open squat down toilet. This means there is no privacy when you relieve yourself. You sleep on the hard cement floor on your thin mat. There is no bed or cushions. The sleeping was in cramped conditions as the floor space was small for 3 people.

The first day was hard for me. There was 8 weeks to go, and this was my first day.

Thereafter there was the daily routine. As you have no watch, you cannot tell the time. But it was roughly like this. You get up before sun up when it is still dark. No one wakes you up but you get into that routine. At about 7.30 am, you hear a bell ringing five times. This means you have to stand up with your cell mates with your hands behind you. An officer passes your cell and slides open the peep hole. You then say "Good Morning Sir" all together.

After that you go back to sleep if you want. About an hour later your cell is opened by a warden. Outside there is another prisoner who brings a large vessel with either tea or coffee with bread spread thinly with either butter or jam. This alternates daily each day. One day, coffee with bread and jam and the next day, tea with bread and butter. Breakfast is the same routine day after day. You also take fresh water in your container that you have. Then your cell is locked. You eat your breakfast in your cell.

After your breakfast, you and your cell mates arrange each of our boxes in a row, one against the other, waiting for the cell to be opened again for you to go to the yard. Each day, we are allowed 45 minutes in a yard outside the cell. I was kept away from the other prisoners at all times. The other prisoners in the building were taken to a large yard where they could play games and interact with others. In my case, they made sure that I had no contact with the prison population. I together with my cell mates were taken to a special rooftop yard where there was no one else other than the three of us. They did not want me to speak to the other prisoners. They did not want the other prisoners to know why I was in prison.

Before we could go to the yard, we were subjected to an unpleasant procedure. We were required to strip naked, hold the T shirt in one hand and the shorts in the other, squat down and open your mouth while a warden watched. There was also a camera watching you. The reason given for this procedure was to ensure that we did not have any hidden contraband in any orifice or in the mouth. But this was demeaning. There is no way we could have any contraband since we were locked up 23 hours of the day and the rest of 45 minutes we were under guard. It is quite clear that the reason for this demeaning procedure was to belittle the prisoner. To humiliate him and humble him.

The small rooftop yard was one flight of stairs above my cell floor. After the 45 minutes in the yard, we were brought back to our cell. We then took our soap and towels and accompanied the warden to a shower. Again, they made sure that even my shower was separate from the other prisoners. We were led to a small shower room where only myself and my 2 other cell mates had our shower.

The shower was about 15 minutes. At the shower the warden will ask you if you need a shave. If so, another prisoner will bring your shaver, specially marked with your number. You are required to use the same razor throughout your prison term. Being Indian I had more facial hair than my cell mates, they being Vietnamese. But I never got a new razor throughout my 8 weeks in prison. Maybe if I asked for a new razor, I would have been given one, but it was not necessary.

While you shower and shave a warden will be watching you. You get used to nakedness and being constantly watched.

After your shower you are taken back to your cell and locked up. After about an hour or so, your cell door opens again and outside you find another prisoner with 3 trays of food and a water bucket. You take fresh water in your small water container and each of us bends to the ground to pick up our food tray. The demeaning thing about it is that a warden stands next to your food tray and you have to bend down to pick it up from his feet. As if you are bowing to him. I have no doubt they do it intentionally. Sometimes to avoid the humiliation of this, I used to pick up the food tray from the floor with my back facing the warden. I was not challenged for doing it that way.

Lunch was again routine. Sometimes you had a piece of fried fish with rice and vegetables which I liked the most. Other days the food was a fish cake or sausage or sometimes just noodles and vegetables. On occasion we had NasiLemak which was small pilchards fried and peanuts and curry paste. The food was all right but it wasn't good. For lunch you also had a fruit which was invariably an apple, an orange or a small banana. Almost everyday, the best thing I enjoyed was that single fruit.

About an hour later you hear the bells again. And you stand in a row with your hands behind you back to say "Good Afternoon Sir" when the peep hole opens on your door and the warden passes.

After about 2 hours later the door opens again, this time for dinner. The same routine with changing your water bucket for fresh water and taking your food tray. About an hour later, you hear the bells again and you stand up in a row and say "Good Morning Sir" when the officer opens your peep hole on your door.

And then it gets dark and you go to sleep for another day of the same routine tomorrow.

You get a pen and paper every 14 days to write a letter to someone. After you have written the letter your paper and pen is taken away. The same happens 2 weeks later. Once I had some cancellations made in my letter and it was rejected and I was told to write again without erasures. Since I had all the time in the world with nothing to do, I read. But the books are not given to you immediately. You only get the books about 2 days after you had requested them. The reason for the 2 day delay is because the books have to be cleared by a censor, whatever that means. I read about 6 books while in jail. Had I anymore more books, I would have read more, but that was all I had. You see, in prison, there is absolutely nothing to do, being locked up 23 hours a day. In fact, you wouldn’t be entirely wrong if you would call it, a full room service hotel with no stars.

During my time there, US Consul Learned Dees visited me and provided consular assistance. Just before my release, Jamie Revitz took over from Learned Dees and met me twice.

On one occasion, I had told Rehabilitation Officer MohammedFahmi that I was unhappy to be forced to suffer the indignity every day of having to strip naked before a prison warden before going to the yard and opening my mouth. I told him that I was contemplating disobeying that rule since it was totally unnecessary and demeaning of a human being. A little while later this officer came to see me and asked me to sign a disciplinary warning that I had threatened to disobey a prison regulation and that I was being warned for a violation. I refused. I said that the way the report was written did not reflect what actually happened.

A little while later the Officer Commanding of Block A, my cell block, Assistant Superintendent of Prisons G Savier came to see me. He is an Indian Tamil. He appeared to relish the fact that I was in prison because I criticized a judge. I told him that I refused to sign something that was inaccurate. After some discussion, another warden came to see me. He asked me to take my box from my room and follow him. He took me to another cell, where I was to be all alone. This cell had a camera inside. This was solitary confinement. He locked me inside. As I knew that I cannot win in an argument in prison, regardless of how right I was, I asked G. Savier if I could now sign whatever he wanted. I then signed the document that he prepared even though it was not what had actually happened. I was prepared to sign anything he wanted. I knew that in prison, they are always right. I signed it, and I was returned to my own cell with my cell mates. I escaped solitary.

What they are trying to do in prison is to humiliate you. To humble you. To make you submit. For instance each time an officer speaks to you, you are ordered to squat down on the floor. You are not allowed to speak to him standing up. I tried to avoid squatting on the floor as much as I can by saying that my foot hurt.

While in prison, I was not allowed a single visitor other than the US Consul, even though I gave the wardens several names of people that I would like a visit from. I wrote to them in prison stationary asking them to visit. But I was told that no one applied to visit me. After I was released, I found out from Singapore Democratic Party activists that as many as 15 people applied to visit me. The prison did not allow a single one. I also did not receive a single letter. I do not know whether it was because no one wrote to me, or because the prison did not give me any of the letters.

Throughout my time in prison of 8 weeks, I kept my spirits up. To give myself comfort, I thought of Nelson Mandela who had to spend 26 years in prison. Of Gandhi who spent many years in it. Of Dr. Chee Soon Juan. Of MarwanBargouti, the Palestinian who is serving a life sentence in an Israeli Jail. Of Ahmed Kathrada in Robbin Island, South Africa. Of Steven Biko who was murdered in custody. And not forgetting ChiaThyePoh and Lim Chin Siong who languished for a long time in Lee Kuan Yew’s jails. Compared to them what was 8 weeks. Cheer up, Gopalan Nair, you are stronger than that, I would say.

Finally the day came for my release. On Nov 20, 2008 I was taken in handcuffs in a prison van to Immigration and Checkpoints Authority next to Lavender MRT. I was processed again, fingerprints taken, my pictures taken and given a warning by Mr. Hughes Tan who works there that I was deported from Singapore. I was allowed 5 days to remain in Singapore to arrange my affairs and to leave Singapore permanently on November 26, 2008 from Changi Airport. I arranged my ticket in the meantime, and then it was Goodbye Singapore forever. I boarded flight SQ2 enroute to Hong Kong and San Francisco.

I had lost a lot of weight. That was one good thing that came out of it. Of course, it was a great adventure. Also a great honor to have been in Lee Kuan Yew’s prison for a cause that I am proud of.

Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.

Tuesday, December 23, 2008

You must not forget to keep a list of all the king's men. Lee Kuan Yew is 85 and trying hard to stay alive a little longer. He is desperate. But he cannot escape death who is just one step behind. Each time he looks back, the spectre of death is a step closer.

And just as all other dictators throughout history, he has made the same mistake of placing bureaucrats; men who have just passed their exams and done their sums to positions of authority. His ministers and politicians have no leadership skills, their only qualification being able to blindly obey authority. And history has shown that when the dictator dies there is nothing left to replace the vacuum. These weak men and women are incapable of wielding authority. And neither will the people be willing to obey them.

With his death these men and women will have no authority to rule. The people will no longer be prepared to accept their dictates. There will be unrest and confusion.

And you can imagine what will happen. The first thing these men do will be to flee the country with whatever they have before it is too late. And in a small island like Singapore, it is enough if a single person in authority flees. Then it will trigger a flood. And that will ruin the country.

Eighty five year old Lee Kuan Yew knows this. He worries what will happen with his impending death. He worries for his son, whom he appointed the Prime Minister, whether he can govern as he does now. I have no doubt that history will repeat itself. There has to be change once Big Brother leaves.

And talking about Orwell's Big Brother in his book 1984, the situation in it was different. There Big Brother is eternal. He will never die. No one knows even whether Big Brother is human. No one has seen him. He exists as an idea. In such a situation, an oligarchy can go on forever because people fear Big Brother who is ever present as an idea, and his dictates, or rather the dictates of the oligarchy can rule forever. If only Lee Kuan Yew could have devised a system where he exists as an idea, ever present and eternal, he and his cronies could rule forever. But sadly for him, George Orwell's book is fiction. Lee cannot do it in real life. We know who he is. We also know that he is the strongman of Singapore. We also know that he must die. We also know that he rules through fear. And we also know that when he dies the fear will be lifted from the people's hearts and when that happens, it will be the end.

That is why I say you have to make a list. And that is why every Singaporean must keep a list of those in authority who have abused their power to hurt innocent people to please the strongman and advance their careers.Davinder Singh, counsel for Lee Kuan Yew for all his defamation actions against his critics is high on the list. He has used his profession to knowingly destroy Lee Kuan Yew's critics when he knows it was wrong. He does it to advance his career and for money. Singh in any American jurisdiction would have been disbarred long ago. Almost all American jurisdictions code of ethics for lawyers makes it malpractice for a lawyer to knowingly further a cause which he knows to be without merit. Every case in the long series of defamation cases that he conducted was totally without merit or legal basis. I am of course talking of the series of cases which he won, with the connivance of Singapore judges to bankrupt and impoverish JBJeyaretnam, Dr. Chee Soon Juan and Tang LiangHong. Every one of those cases showed various defences to the claims. Any politician is liable to be criticised in a free society and every one of those cases involved legitimate criticism which was covered by the defences of justification, fair comment and qualified privilege. But despite that Singh wins each time and each time he knows that he has destroyed an innocent man. He must be held to account.

We can expect Singh to take the first plane out with Lee's death. He must be stopped and held to account.

Take Belinda Ang whom I had criticized and which landed me in jail. She is a corrupt judge misusing the law to please Lee Kuan Yew. I have narrated a few egregious instances of her actions in this blog. You can get further details in Dr. Chee Soon Juan's blog and also hear the audio transcripts in it. You will walk away with disgust hearing it. She and Singh made sure that Dr. Chee was not given any meaningful opportunity to do anything or say anything at all. I am sure she too is worrying now. I am sure her plans will also be to flee to safety. She has to be stopped. She has to be forced to account for her actions. She must be on the list.

And the same goes for Jeffrey Chan, the solicitor general of Lee Kuan Yew who was commissioned to prosecute Lee's critics and send them to jail. You will recall his actions in court when 4 young men and women took their case to court to demand justice, after protesting at the CPF building, when he asked for court costs against them, which the complaint judge willingly agreed resulting in the 4 being made bankrupt.

And you will recall his prosecution in the kangaroo T shirt case where he was demanding long imprisonment terms against the 3 men for just exercising their right of free speech. The men were sent to jail and ordered to pay court costs in excess of $5,000.00, which will cause intolerable financial hardship on them, when he knew they were only doing what they were entitled to do. That is to criticize.

In my case, when I was charged for contempt of court, he was demanding a long prison term if I did not do what he wanted; that is to apologize. And he demanded that I pay $5,000.00 in court costs. I have not paid it but that is not the point. The point of it all was to send a message through the state controlled press that others should beware of criticizing Singapore judges, because if they do, they will be sent to jail and made to pay $5,000.00 fine. He has to on the list. I have no doubt that he too worries what will befall him with the death of Lee Kuan Yew. Will he be held to account? Will the people demand that he himself be put on trial and punished for his actions?

Judith Prakash was the judge that convicted the Kangaroo T shirt trio with that unjust punishment. I am sure she too is turning in her sleep thinking about what will happen to her when the Big Boy goes. I won't be surprised if she is already planning to move to Australia. She too has to be on the list. Very high on the list.

The same goes for judge Kan Ting Chu, and every other judge in Singapore. He must be held to account. So too with retired judge MohideenHaja Rubin. So must ASP Abdul RazakZakaria, Lee's chosen policeman to arrest and prosecute innocent people merely for criticizing Lee Kuan Yew and his judges. It is not enough for him to say that he was merely following orders. There are just orders and unjust ones. And when you enforce an unjust order knowingly, you are held to account. Having received superior orders is not a defence to hurt ordinary people. Oh yes, he is on the list. In his case, I doubt if he can run anywhere, so among the worriers, he has to worry the most.

Everyone who has deliberately hurt others to further their careers and for money, serving as Lee's agents have to answer for their actions. Justice demands it.

I hear that Lee Kuan Yew was recently in hospital and fitted with a pacemaker. His heart has begun to beat irregularly. I also understand that he travels around with a squad of doctors to treat him in an emergency. These are signs of desperation. The man is desperately trying to keep alive because he knows how bad it will be for his son when he goes. And at this time, the people of Singapore have to keep a lookout for their fellow men and women, the king's men, who have deliberately hurt them for profit.

Singaporeans are a gentle people. I don't think they will shoot them as was the case in countries such as Iran or Russia, after the overthrow of the Shah and the capture of the Tzar. No, there is no need for violence. Singaporeans should treat them according to law. A just and fair law; not the law that these men and women of Lee Kuan Yew used against them. We will have to see what happens and it will happen very soon.

Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Singapore's lawyers dress in their traditional black suits pulling formal leather briefcaseslooking all serious and hurrying in and out of Singapore courtrooms. You cannot be faulted if you believed that they were real lawyers. Sadly, except for their outward appearance, they are far from lawyers in the real sense. Truly, they are not in a position to further the interests of their client one bit, except with the agreement of Lee Kuan Yew and his complaint judges. They are helpless in furthering the law. They can go through the motions, but truly, the law is Lee unto himself, through the medium of his willing judge.

Any red blooded lawyer in this situation would have protested to high Heaven and demanded that the law should rule, not Lee Kuan Yew. But not in Singapore. In Singapore, the lawyers themselves are terrified of him and therefore their main purpose is to stay out of prison and earn a living, because to demand that the law be upheld would mean ruination in every sense of the word.

I had to remain in Singapore for 6 months, 2 of which I spent in prison for writing an article critical of one of his judges. During the rest of the time, I spent a great deal of time in court defending myself, where I met many lawyers going about their work.

One of the lawyers I met, whom I knew from the days I practiced in Singapore was G. Raman. The meeting with him was short. I asked him whether he was aware of the abuse of the legal system by Lee Kuan Yew and what was he doing about it. He answered me with a question. He asked me whether I wished that he should lose his house, meaning of course that if he challenged Lee Kuan Yew, he would be sued and would have to sell his house to pay him. And then he promptly left, wearing his black suit and tie and pulling a large bag with many files in it, looking very intelligent and wise.Another lawyer I spoke to in court was MangalamAmaladass. To the same question, he had nothing to say, and after that meeting he never spoke to me again when I met him.

If there is one profession that should be ashamed of themselves, it is the lawyers. It is they who have intimate knowledge of the law, the importance of the Constitution, and the need to uphold it. It is upon their shoulders that lie this burden by the very fact they are lawyers. And it is very sad to see their complete abdication of their duty to their calling.

Dr. Chee Soon Juan has to fight his cases himself because no Singapore lawyer is prepared to represent him. Chia Ti Lick, solicitor, is one lawyer who is prepared to do it, and we give him credit for it. But understandably he too is constrained from going the full extent of calling a rat a rat. He has to moderate his arguments, making sure that it will not invite the wrath of Lee Kuan Yew which would be the end of his career. So in effect, sadly, someone who is being persecuted by Lee Kuan Yew in his courts might feel it best to argue his own case, since there is no one; not a single lawyer who is prepared to say it as it should, come what may, because that is what the duty of a lawyer really is.

I understand the legal profession in Singapore is shrinking, which shows that many lawyers are unwilling to continue with this charade. Many are emigrating. New entrants to the profession are declining. We must applaud those who take this route. But it is those who stay behind and continue practicing without protest who must think of what they are doing. They must examine their conscience. Pretending to be lawyers, going around dressed in black suits and pulling bulky files in and out of courtrooms is not enough.

Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Another confirmation of what everyone is saying. Which is, Singapore is Lee Kuan Yew's dictatorship which he manages principally through a corrupt and compliant judiciary. Can we expect another round of defamation and contempt of courts lawsuits, or is it only in cases where the victim is helpless? That is, if he is within Singapore?

Dr. Barr has done a great service to the people of Singapore. Thank you. And so has Mr. Francis Seow for writing the book. Thank you.

Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.

FRANCIS Seow's third book is a savage and unmerciful critique of Singapore's judicial system. He provides convincing evidence that the Singapore court system is basically the play-thing of former Prime Minister (currently Minister Mentor) Lee Kuan Yew, through which he toys with and destroys his enemies at his leisure; corrupting the Bench, the legal profession, the police and the profession of journalism on the way through. The case presented by Seow – which is overwhelming drawn from the intimate detail of a single legal battle – demonstrates beyond reasonable doubt that Singapore is at heart a corrupt dictatorship separated from Third World dictatorships primarily by its national income and the cleverness of the techniques by which it manipulates institutional power.

It is a damning indictment that could have been much more powerful if Seow had resisted the temptation to indulge in childish name calling and heavy-handed didacticism. These acts of self-indulgence dominate the first part of the book and are never far away in the rest. Their main impact, as far as I can see, is to give defenders of the Singapore system and of Lee Kuan Yew the excuse they need to dismiss the book as 'just another anti-Singapore rant'. Seow's arrogant style was probably perfected while he was part of the system he is now critiquing (having been Lee's choice for the position of Solicitor-General in the 1980s), but if the reader can put these defects aside it will become clear that this is a deeply disturbing story of manipulative and duplicitous behaviour on the part of Lee Kuan Yew as he set out to use a quiescent judicial and legal fraternity to destroy an innocent man, along with his wife and his lawyer.

The man in question is Tang LiangHong who had the temerity to question the procedure by which Lee Kuan Yew and other notables (including his son and the current prime minister, Lee HsienLoong), were cleared of any suggestion of impropriety when they accepted million dollar discounts from a property developer. Much of the book is concerned with the political and public relations machinations by which Tang was caught up in Lee's web of retaliation, but in this review it must be sufficient to relay just a few of the most salient facts to give the reader a sense of the book.

For instance, what are we to make of a legal system that gives a defendant a couple of hours (literally) to find a solicitor, a translator (since she could speak no English), and prepare and present a defence in court to a procedure about which she had literally no understanding? Or where a judge sits in judgement on a case where he himself is implicated as a recipient of one of the real estate discounts that started the whole procedure, and who had previously worked for the family law firm of the primary litigant (Lee Kuan Yew)? Or where a judge (not the same judge) can receive many sets of documents, each hundreds of pages thick and so badly copied and paginated as to substantially illegible and unreadable, and yet two and a half hours later bring down a legal judgement based on his considered legal interpretation of the implications of their contents? Or where a summons to chambers is issued by an appellant's lawyers rather than by the court, but the court upholds it? Or where evidence that proves beyond all reasonable doubt the innocence of the defendant is not only refused admission in court, but all record of its existence is expunged from the record?Seow has drawn primarily on court documents for his evidence, having been supplied with a complete set (included documents later expunged from the record) by Tang LiangHong, who is now a de facto exile from Singapore. Fully the last third of the volume is occupied by transcriptions of some of the most damning court documents, including a fair sample of documents where Lee Kuan Yew and his allies condemn themselves by their own words. (Seow delights in using Lee's own words to demonstrate his capriciousness and duplicity. At one point he was even able to cite Lee as his primary source to sustain his charge that Lee was the arch-manipulator of the proceedings. Seow tends to overplay his hand when using this technique, but Lee's arrogance and peremptory choice of words do rather lend themselves to ridicule.)This is a powerful book, but it could have been much more.

Dr Barr :Lecturer in International Relations, School of Political and International Studies, Flinders University School Director of Studies (B.A) School Ethics Research Adviser Deputy Chair, Faculty of Social Sciences Undergraduate Standing Committee.Home

Thursday, December 11, 2008

There was a joke in the former Soviet Union which goes like this. In Pravda, there is no "truth" and in Isvestia there is no "news", which by the way were the 2 main newspapers in Soviet Russia. In Russian, Pravda meant "truth" and Izvestia meant "news". Both, of course, were state owned and controlled newspapers in the former Soviet Union. But what you got was neither truth nor news, just plain propaganda. That the Soviet Union is doing well. Grain production has gone up ten fold. The country cannot be in a better shape. Everything is just perfect. Except that the Soviet Union in truth was crumbling.

Which reminds me of the state owned and controlled Singapore newspapers such as the Straits Times. And by the way, the entire Singapore press and media is both owned and controlled by Lee Kuan Yew and his government. No one is allowed to print and publish any newspaper in Singapore without a permit from Lee Kuan Yew's government under the Newspapers and Printing Presses Act. And you guessed it. If you were going to write anything critical of him, you not only would be denied that permit, but you will be sued for defamation, crippling damages will be awarded and you will be promptly bankrupted.

I have not been able to get any real news in the state controlled Straits Times. For instance today's Straits Times carried an article about a teenage boy who had sex with another teenager; a prostitute was found precariously hanging from a high rise HDB flat and Walter Woon, Singapore's Attorney General counters an argument of a lawyer who says there is one law for the rich and another for the poor. But what news is there about the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Trade, the Ministry of Manpower, the Foreign Ministry? Nothing.

And no one can contradict anything put out by this state controlled press one way or the other, for the simple reason that no one knows what is really happening.

Which leaves me to guess as best I can, reading what is out there in the foreign media. They tell us that Singapore has turned into a tax haven for the rich from other countries, as a money laundering center, like Vanuatu, a Pacific atoll. A place where the poor are no longer able to live due to unbearable costs. A place where one person takes his life everyday mainly by jumping off high rise HDB flats and where the government uses the law courts to punish dissenters by throwing them in jail, one of the victims being myself.

On the whole, one thing is clear. The reputation of Singapore has been irreparably tarnished. There is no doubt about it. The Washington Post is the foremost and most highly respected newspaper in the United States together with the New York Times. And if the Washington Post reports that Singapore is a country which uses its laws to suppress legitimate criticism, then this must be the end for Singapore. And this is exactly what they did in their report titled "Public enemy in Singapore" dated Dec 9, 2008 when they described the shameful use of the law courts to silence Dr. Chee Soon Juan.

Singapore is not a self sufficient agricultural country that can ignore international opinion. It is not Burma. Every aspect of Singapore's existence depends on the goodwill of the world. Trade, education, investment, banking and commerce. Once it's reputation is sullied, it can no longer pretend to be a place that one chooses to invest in, a place where one gets educated in, a place where one does honest banking.

And in the end, the truth always has a habit of surfacing. Tyrants and dictators around the world will try to put up a good face in public, but their lies and deceit must eventually begin to take a toll. As is the case with Singapore's Lee Kuan Yew.

Another report of significance is the Asian Wall Street Journal's article titled "Democracy in Singapore" of June 26 2008 and the article titled "Singapore maneuvers in response to Chee" in the Far Easter Economic Review of Dec 9, 2008. These are not papers that one can easily dismiss. They are read by people of importance all over the world. And what they say is the same thing. That Singapore's attempt to show themselves as a democracy with the rule of law is nothing but a front. That it is in fact plain and simply a dictatorship with Lee Kuan Yew the dictator since 1959, as long a Fidel Castro of Cuba.

Dr. Chee Soon Juan is undoubtedly winning in this battle between democracy and tyranny, between truth and falsity and between the rule of law and rule by dictate. And with the Godsend, the Internet, Lee Kuan Yew cannot win in his desperate attempt to continue to keep criticism under wraps.

The effect of this bad publicity will undoubtedly take a toll on the Singapore dictator's ability to continue with business as usual. The rot has already begun to spread. The edifice has to fall in due course. This is the time for everyone who cares for Singapore to weigh in with the truth and help to turn this place into a real democracy. Agitate, write, protest, go to jail, do whatever you can. It cleanses the soul. And you can look at yourself tomorrow and tell yourself, there was a man. Not a dictator's lackey.

Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.

Blog: http://singaporedissident.blogspot.com/ Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.

Sunday, December 7, 2008

The Singapore government forcing me to remain in Singapore for 6 months, waiting for my trial for allegedly insulting a judge on this blog has caused me to suffer great financial loss. Your financial donations will help greatly. Please send then to the address below. Many thanks.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

On the 17th of September 2008, I was convicted and sentenced to 3 months imprisonment in Singapore for allegedly insulting a judge in a blog post in this blog. While I was serving sentence in prison with 1 week to go for my release, I was again charged for contempt of court for allegedly showing disrespect for the judge in another case, for saying things such as " I do not expect to get a fair trial in this court". As I knew that a denial of the charge would mean further time in prison, I pleaded guilty and said anything they wanted to hear, which resulted in no further jail time.

Since my return to the US, I have not only further criticized the Singapore judges as corrupt and agents for the dictator of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew, as can be seen in all my 6 blog posts since Nov 28, 2008, I have further defied them by intentionally and publicly being in contempt of the court order off Judge Leslie Chew, of Court 15, Subordinate Courts Singapore by not only attacking the Singapore judiciary, but also by putting up the blog posts of Sept 1, 2008 and Sept 6, 2008, which were ordered removed.

By reading this blog, you can see that I am deliberately attacking the Singapore judiciary by calling them stooges of the Singapore dictator Lee Kuan Yew. The Singapore government, their Attorney General and the Singapore judiciary cannot pretend not to know what I write here because it is they who had charged and imprisonment me for 3 months because of the contents of this blog.

Singapore, as you know claims to be a first world modern city. It also claims to have the rule of law. It also claims to be a nation, proud of itself. In such a case, what I want to ask is this. Why, if this is so, if in fact Singapore claims to be country of laws; why is it doing nothing about a man in the United States deliberately calling its judges lackeys of the government and deliberately violating a court order; all of which has been given wide publicity, not only in Singapore but internationally?

I am sure if any person, had deliberately broken the laws of America or Australia or India or any other self respecting country and escaped to another, that country would use all means to repatriate him to stand trial for his crimes and be committed to prison for his contempt. I am sure that I would not dare to violate a law of any state in the US and run to another country, because I am certain that I will face extradition proceedings to have me returned to stand trial. Why, because America is a proud nation and will not stand by to see anyone brazenly flouting its laws.

I want to reiterate. While in Singapore, I had called Judge Belinda Ang a stooge of Lee Kuan Yew and his son, in my blog. According to Singapore judge Kan Ting Chiu, I had committed a serious, mind you serious, crime, for which he sent me to jail for 3 months. Now having returned to the US, I have done the same thing, expect that the criticism was even harsher. I have called High court judges Kan Ting Chiu and Judith Prakash shamelessly corrupt for being agents of Lee Kuan Yew and his government. What is more, I have deliberately broken a court order and boasting about it.

The Singapore government's complete failure to pursue me by law, clearly confirms what I have said all along. This is a government that continues to stay in power by bullying it's people into not criticizing their policies, which they do by using compliant judges to imprison dissenters. The disgusting thing is that they know that if they ever tried to apply for extradition proceedings through the American courts, they would be laughed at as a bunch of comedians. Realizing that they have no chance of convincing an American court, or for that matter, an Australian or Canadian or British or French, or any court in the free world that I have committed a crime, they remain silent as I continue from here to expose the corruption of Lee Kuan Yew and his disgraced judiciary.

As someone said it very nicely "Come and get me if you can, you bunch of bully boys. Why not try your dirty tricks in a free country, like the the USA"?

Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.

Saturday, December 6, 2008

I claimed trial and disputed the charge that I had intentionally insulted Justice Belinda Ang of the High Court when I wrote in this blog that she had "prostituted her position as a judge" during the Lee Kuan Yew vs Dr. Chee Soon Juan trial, held from May 26 to May 28, 2008 in Singapore. I was charged under the following Penal Code section:Section 228, Singapore Penal Code: Whoever intentionally offers any insult or causes any interruption to any public servant, while such public servant is sitting in any stage of a judicial proceeding shall be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine which may extend to $5,000, or with both.

I was clearly not guilty under the section. The elements of the section were inapplicable in my case.

Offering an insult: It is well established that any law has to be clear and precise on it's face. The word "insult" is so vague and open to a million interpretations that no one could know one way or the other whether something is an "insult" or not. It is precisely for this reason that this section is clearly unenforceable and void.

For instance, would calling someone "fat" if he was in fact fat amount to an insult. It is like a court convicting a person under a law which says "it is unlawful to be a bad person". Clearly no one could know what is precisely a "bad person". One person's opinion would clearly be different from another.

This is exactly what I argued in court. I told Justice Kang that it would have been impossible for anyone beforehand to know what was an insult and what was not. And such laws have a chilling effect on all speech, where people would not want to offer any criticism lest the court finds that it amounts to an insult. This completely contravenes the supreme law of the land, the Constitution, which guarantees free speech and expression. Justice Kang had nothing to say on this point.

Second, I argued that if something I said amounted to the truth, it cannot amount to an insult. The dictionary definition of the word "prostituting ones position of judge" (see my earlier blog post Dec 3rd 2008) clearly defines it as a person who abuses his or her office for an odious purpose. With various examples in my blog post of May 29, 2008, I had described factually my reasons why I said this. What I said was the truth. And therefore how can stating the truth amount to an insult? To this, Justice Kang made a remark which was out of this world. He said, a remark can be an insult even if it was true. He said, to tell someone that "his father was a drunk and his mother is a bigamist" even if true amounted to an insult. To this, I told him that it should depend on the circumstances in which it was said, but it all fell, as was to be expected on deaf ears.

Examine these words: any insult or causes any interruption to any public servant, while such public servant is sitting in any stage of a judicial proceeding. Any reasonable reading of these words should mean that the defendant should have been physically present in court and either insulted the judge or interrupted the proceedings. I had never insulted Justice Ang in her court and neither did I interrupt her proceedings. Instead, I wrote a blog post criticizing her conduct as a judge. I had never asked her to read my blog post. Other people read my blog. But how can that amount to my insulting her, without even any action by me in her court.

Of course, the judge took no interest in anything I said and wholeheartedly agreed with the prosecutor that a) the insult need not be in her court even though the section clearly means this and b) it did not matter that I did not personally insult her. It was sufficient that others read it in my blog!

Examine these words: Sitting in any stage of judicial proceeding. The case, assessment of damagesbefore Judge Ang in the High Court between Lee Kuan Yew and Dr. Chee took place from May 26 2008 and ended on May 28, 2008. Justice Ang then said that she will state the amount of damages at a later date. The court was no longer sitting in proceedings after May 28, 2008. There will not be any court hearings after this at all. All that will happen after May 28, 2008 is for the Judge, at some unspecified time in the future, to inform the parties by mail of the quantum of damages that Dr. Chee has to pay. I had written this blog post criticizing her on May 29, 2008 at which date, the court was no longer sitting. The hearing was concluded by then.

I therefore told Judge Kang that I cannot be guilty of the charge since the court was no longer sitting in proceedings. To this argument, Justice Kang stated that because Judge Ang had yet to decide on the quantum of damages, the court, believe it or not, was still "sitting in proceedings". What then, I asked Judge Kang, if Judge Ang does not decide on the quantum of damages for 2 years! Can it then be said that her court was sitting in proceedings for the full 2 years!

To anyone reading this section, "sitting in proceedings" has to mean only one thing, that is, the court has to be physically in session with parties arguing their case before it. Otherwise, by no stretch of imagination, can it ever be argued that it is. Again all this fell on deaf ears. His stand was that because Judge Ang was yet to deliver her judgementon the quantum of damages, her court was "still sitting in proceedings", even though the court was not in session! As far as he was concerned, there was nothing more to it.

And further proof that the Judge was misusing this law was this. The prosecutor could not find a single authority that had any similarity to my case. He relied on one case, the only one he could find. In that case, the defendant, being angry at the sentence ordered by the judge, yelled expletives at him in Tamil and damaged the dock in court!

Judge Kang during my trial in the High Court from Sept 08, 2008 to Sept 17, 2008 was not acting as a judge. He was a PAP politician, silencing criticism of Lee Kuan Yew and his courts. He was also using me to intimidate everyone else in the islandof Singapore, warning them them not to criticize Lee Kuan Yew's government or his courts, regardless of how much they abuse the law. And if they did, they will be have to serve a prison sentence of 3 months, like me.

It is up to the reader of this blog to ponder over this question. Are you going to be bullied by Judge Kang and keep your mouth shut (because that is what he wants you to do) or are you going to say that you are a human being and will not allow him to intimidate you?

Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

An appeal for donationsLadies and Gentlemen, As you are aware, my forced stay in Singapore for 6 months by the Singapore government by their holding my passport and preventing me to travel, has resulted in severe financial burden to me. I have to get my law practice back into swing and get all other small matters taken care of. I am therefore badly in need of financial assistance. Your donations at this time will be greatly appreciated.If you can donate, please send the moneys through Western Union which is available at any post office in Singapore. Same applies to those in other countries.Any amount will be appreciated.When sending the funds, please email me the reference number to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com. Payable to "Gopalan Nair". Many thanks Gopalan Nair

Ladies and Gentlemen,

The state controlled press, the Straits Times of Singapore of Dec 3, 2008, reports that 2 days after I reached American soil, I retracted any apology given in the Lee Kuan Yew controlled courts of Singapore, Court 15, Subordinate Courts, before Judge Leslie Chew. This is correct. All apologies are retracted. So is my undertaking not to write my mind on the dire lack of human rights, the shameful lack of independence of the courts and everything else that need to be addressed. I shall also be reposting the blog posts which I was required to remove of Sept 1 and Sept 6 of 2008 in this blog.

The newspaper report states that the Singapore attorney general is looking into my turn about. My advice to the Attorney General of Singapore is to do all he can and whatever he wants. But the sad fact, for him that is, I am on American soil. America is a free country.

If he determined to make a fool of himself, extradition is what he has to consider. To do that, Singapore has to apply through diplomatic channels to register the claim in a US court. A US court would then have to consider whether what I did would be a violation of the laws in Singapore. In considering the question, they will have to look into the question whether what I did would tantamount to a crime in the United States. It is here that Singapore would find themselves in a bind. America is a country of laws. And their judges are proud to defend those laws. Not like Singapore which uses its courts as their principle tool to silence dissent. There is no way that Singapore can even hope to succeed. But I would be glad if they tried, which would make me an even greater celebrity than what they already have made me.

Dictatorships all over the world use dirty tactics to stay in power for as long as they can. I say for as long as they can, because sooner or later they all collapse. One of these tactics is to unjustly condemn a man and then repeat that lie over and over, hoping that the lie will eventually take root.

The state controlled press report mentions that "In writing about the case on his blog, he insulted High Court judge Belinda Ang". This is a deliberate lie. This refers to my arrest and conviction for what I had written in my blog post Thursday, May 29, 2008 Singapore. Judge Belinda Ang's Kangaroo Court. The material words which the Singapore Court relied on to convicted me before Justice Kan Ting Chiu of the Supreme Court were

"The judge Belinda Ang was throughout prostituting herself during the entire proceedings, by being nothing more than an employee of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and his son and carrying out their orders. There was murder, the rule of law being the repeated victim."

The state controlled Singapore court with its complaint judge Kan Ting Chiu found that the words "prostituting herself during the entire proceedings", among other parts of the blog post, was an insult to her.

This is completely untrue. According to Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, other than the usual meaning of a prostitute being a street walker, it also means

a) to devote to corrupt or unworthy purposes, debase, e.g. to prostitute one's talents b) devoted to corrupt purposes c) a person who (as a writer or painter) who deliberately debases himself or his talents (as for money).

And this was exactly what Judge Belinda Ang did during those 3 days of May 26 to May 28, 2008 in the High Court of Singapore. Reading the blog you will see that my accusation is factually correct. She unashamedly, throughout the proceedings permitted her position of a judge to be used for Lee Kuan Yew and his son's advantage; not the not the interests of the law.

And I repeat those words I said again here. She undoubtedly "prostituted herself in her position as a judge" to serve the interests of Lee Kuan Yew and his son, the Prime Minister of Singapore.

Therefore there was no insult at all. My claim is factually correct. I am lawyer and I choose my words with discretion. But whatever the truth was, did not matter to Lee Kuan Yew's agent, Judge Kan Ting Chiu that day. He finds that I insulted the judge when there was no insult at all. And now, the state controlled Straits Times picks it up and repeats that defamation again and again hoping that people will believe that I had in fact insulted the judge.

And then another lie. The report reads " Separately in July he behaved in a disorderly fashion and hurled expletives at police officers". I did no such thing.

I was accosted by 5 men claiming to be police officers who demanded to see my particulars in Little India on the July 4th 2008 at about 8.30 pm in Race Course Road, Little India, Singapore. Not knowing who they were I refused. And a little later, I was arrested. Of course, I being Gopalan Nair, and a former Singapore opposition politician, they pressed charges and came up with anything they can imagine which included an accusation that I called one of the police officers "A Malay bastard" and that I was gesticulating with my hands.

The trial took 18 days. The police officers in an orchestrated fashion recited the same lies. In fact they could have said anything they wanted, even that I had tried to kill them and the Lee controlled court of Judge James Leong presiding, Court 16, Subordinate Court would have accepted it.

But the judge James Leong having accepted the lies, and convicts me of disorderly behavior and hurling expletives at police officers, the Singapore state controlled paper picks it up and repeats that lie again and again, hoping that somehow the Singapore public would believe that I am a man who goes around hurling abuses at police officers and being disorderly in public.

The Singapore government in their eagerness to tarnish the name of anyone that criticizes them is going about this entirely the wrong way. They should realize that they have chosen the wrong man to defame and punish. I denied both the Judge Belinda Ang case and the disorderly case, which took 18 days and 8 days of trial. They spent a great deal of money and effort. Perhaps they hoped that I would have pleaded guilty and left the country without much fuss. But my refusal to admit the charges and go to trial meant my staying in Singapore for 6 months, which was much more damaging to them.

During this long stay in Singapore, I was able to associate with Dr. Chee Soon Juan and members and activists of their party, understand the political situation in Singapore better and even assist in their political activism.

It increased awareness of may case among the Singapore public, where strangers used to come up to me and shake my hand with appreciation, my picture being on that paper almost everyday. My case received international attention with world bodies calling for my release and for the charges to be dropped. This blog overnight began to be read by almost everyone in Singapore who knew English.

All this, was not in the interests of Lee Kuan Yew's Singapore. If they had given it some thought and found out the sort of person I was, they would have done well to deport me the very day I wrote the blog. But they seem adamant to continue in their folly by their continued interest in me with their newspaper report of Dec 3, 2008.

If someone could advice the Singapore authorities and their state controlled newspaper that it is best to leave me alone for their own good. Of course I hope they would continue with this vendetta against me, because it greatly serves my purpose of exposing this regime of Lee Kuan Yew in Singapore.

The report also states "Mr. Nair was admonished, warned against launching future attacks on the judiciary and had to pay the AGC (Singapore Attorney General) $5,000.00 in legal costs."

While I was in prison, a day before my release, Francis Lim, police officer from Central Police Station came to prison and gave me a letter from the Attorney General demanding that I pay about $6,000 (inclusive of their expenses) by November 26, 2008, which was the date of my banishment from Singapore Changi Airport. You would like to know that I have not paid this and I don't intend to pay this ever. And they made no attempt to stop me from leaving!

By way of parenthesis, you would like to know that in an earlier politically motivated case which partly resulted in my leaving Singapore in 1991 for good, another contempt of court case, an election rally speech in Bukit Merah where I stood as a Workers Party candidate in that by election, I was ordered to pay the Attorney General $13,000.00 which I have refused to pay, as I was already in the US by the time they worked out the figures. And not just that, about that time, I was suspended from practicing as a lawyer in Singapore for 2 years for writing a letter to the then Attorney General demanding that he explain himself on a matter relating to the late JB Jeyaretnam, another shameful political action, in which they worked out my liability for costs in access of, believe it or not, $150,000.00. I have not paid that either.

No other government would sit idly by when an individual mocks their court orders in this fashion. They would take every effort to go after that individual no matter where he was. But you see, the Singapore government is not any other country. All their bravado and their arrogance is only in that small island where they rule by intimidating people by abusing the law. They leave alone anyone outside their borders because they know that they are a morally bankrupt country which will not command the respect of anyone else. Not to say that Singaporeans respect their government or their legal system, but because of fear there is nothing they can do in that prison which is called Singapore.

I would have been satisfied even if a single human being had read this. But with the wide coverage that this blog gets, and with the grapevine, Singapore will hear this and will hear my side of the story.

Your letters are welcome. We reserve the right to publish your letters. Please Email your letters to nair.gopalan@yahoo.com And if you like what I write, please tell your friends. You will be helping democracy by distributing this widely. This blog not only gives information, it dispels government propaganda put out by this dictatorial regime.

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About Me

Determined to find the Truth.
Born Singapore, educated Winstedt School 2 (next to Monks Hill in Newton, Singapore) Raffles Institution, National Service, some travel in Europe, then law studies England, return to Singapore, practiced for 10 years, active Workers Party member, stood elections 1988 and 1991 in Singapore, was harassed and persecuted by Lee Kuan Yew for my political beliefs, left for USA, obtained asylum and admitted California State Bar, practice law ever since in Fremont California near San Francisco. Relinquished Singapore citizenship 2005 because I was not prepared to permit Lee Kuan Yew to unjustly retain my CPF funds if I remained Singapore Citizen. On principle, the only correct thing for me to do was to give it up, for my CPF funds. I am an American Citizen as of 2004.